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What, exactly, is the role of Congress? In the second Trump administration, it is difficult to determine. The power to initiate armed conflict, traditionally viewed as a vital legislative power, has turned into a murky right of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in the past few months, has claimed even more of that power for his administration, authorizing strikes on boats in the Caribbean.

The power of the purse appears to be largely been taken away from Congress as well; now, under the office of budget chief, the OMB director, much of the power to allocate government money has likewise defaulted to the presidency, with the White House asserting the authority to abort legislatively approved expenditures and seeking to move the funds to other uses. It’s not like they’re enacting any legislation, either; virtually all legislation must currently be crammed into spending packages, huge recurring must-spend comprehensive bills that can circumvent the filibuster. But when these fail to be approved – and more and more, they do not – the federal government just shuts down. At least, big parts of the administration shut down – and it’s not clear how many people are aware. Currently, the federal government has been closed all month; there are no signs of it resuming operations in the near future. But the executive branch keeps on operating smoothly.

And so the question of control of Congress can appear somewhat irrelevant. Why should U.S. citizens care who holds a controlling share in a body that has mostly rendered itself powerless?

In what way ‘screw Trump’ rhetoric may assist the state of California’s Proposition 50 succeed

And yet Prop 50, the Golden State’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is approved by voters in a special election next month, has captured the attention of progressives across the country. Partly, it is a delayed response to developments occurring elsewhere: GOP-led states have for a long time adopted extreme biased redistricting while large blue states such as the Golden State, New York and the Evergreen State draw their maps via nonpartisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to narrowly split control of the House and a longstanding sense, by the left, that their party is at a disadvantage. The state proposal is explicitly designed as a countermove to a mid-term redistricting that was recently approved in Texas, which implemented boundaries that will give the GOP an additional five seats in the state’s House representation next year; similar redistricting moves are in progress in states such as the Show-Me State and Indiana. (The left in the Old Dominion are also following the state’s example in seeking to redistrict.)

The state measure seems probable to be approved, as progressive voters react with fear and frustration to Trump’s authoritarian centralization of authority and look for ways to restrain his most extreme tendencies. But the proposition is not free from debate. Some critics caution that the action could have unintended consequences, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict triggering a retaliatory pattern in which Republican-controlled states do additional to draw their districts so as to foreclose any chance of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the result of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, inevitably, that the power of opposing voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and convincing that is meant to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it occurs at all.

It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The initial argument, that the measure will provoke the right to alter their respective maps in response, fails as a causal point: it is illogical to say that the GOP will be made to act in undemocratic ways by the left’s actions when they are already doing so in the absence of those steps. The GOP, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of revenge to change boundaries that guarantee permanent seats for their party: they have been willing to do this for their own benefit, in the complete lack of similar actions by the left, for a long time.

The second objection, in my view, is more significant, expressing not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ undemocratic shift, but a sort of melancholic wish for a distinct nation than the one that the United States has turned into. It is accurate that in a more ideal situation – in the reality that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – the proposition would be distasteful to our principles, and not required by our circumstances. It is not good to manipulate targeted demographics; it is not good for elected officials to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that votes are made uncontested. That these actions have grown essential in order to impede the authoritarian advance of the president’s power and lessen the amount of harm he is capable to inflict is unfortunate; it is a sign of how far we have declined from something more like a representative government. But they are necessary. It is only once the battle against the current administration’s ideology has been successfully concluded that we can lament what opposing it has made us.

If the legislative branch does not in practice have lawmaking, military or budgetary power, what is it, exactly, that the proposition’s five new Democratic house members will be dispatched to Washington to do? One aspect that Congress still retains is the authority to compel testimony, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic government and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In the coming years, if the measure passes and California’s additional representatives are sworn in, they will find themselves a member of a body with the power to investigate the president, to broadcast their investigations into his actions and to force members of his inner circle to testify. It’s significant, and crucially, it’s not something that any conservative would do.

• Moira Donegan is a news outlet writer